A stray dog saved the life of a newborn baby after finding the abandoned infant in a forest and apparently carrying it across a busy road and through some barbed wire to her litter of puppies, witnesses said.
The stray dog found the infant, clad in tattered clothing, in a poor neighbourhood near the Ngong Forests in the capital of Nairobi, Stephen Thoya told the Daily Nation newspaper.

The dog apparently found the baby Friday in a plastic bag in which the infant had been abandoned, said Aggrey Mwalimu, owner of the shed where the animal was guarding its puppies. The 3.3-kilogram infant was taken to hospital for treatment Saturday.

"She is doing well, responding to treatment," Hanna Gakuo, a spokesperson for Kenyatta National Hospital, told Associated Press from the hospital where health workers named the infant Angel.

"She is stable. She is on antibiotics," said Gakuo.

Kenya's news media often report the abandonment of newborns by mothers. Poverty and the inability to care for the child are seen as the root cause of the problem. Most people who abandon babies are never caught.

"Abandoned babies are normally taken to the Kenyatta National Hospital because it is a public hospital," Gakuo said.

"People are now donating diapers and baby clothes for this one."

Illustration:
2 photos by AP
1. CANINE HERO: Felix Omondi, an 11-year-old student, pets an unnamed dog in a compound on the outskirts of Nairobi yesterday. The nursing dog, foraging for food, retrieved an abandoned baby girl in a forest and carried the infant to its litter of puppies, witnesses said yesterday.
2. IN HOSPITAL: This 3.3-kilogram infant was not even bruised by the dog that retrieved her Friday.